Driving Ambition - My Autobiography

by Andrew Strauss

  It offers some sort of explanation for the two centuries that I struck during the game. Batting in India is never easy, especially without extensive practice in those conditions, but on this occasion I never really felt troubled, either by seam or spin. In fact, the biggest problem I faced was the stifling humidity, which made batting for hours more of a physical than a mental hurdle. At the end of the game, having batted for more than twelve hours, I was completely exhausted, but the twin hundreds, a rare feat on the subcontinent, were one of my proudest achievements.

  Inevitably, given the circumstances in which the game was played, my feats were completely overshadowed by those of an Indian player, Sachin Tendulkar. His unbeaten century to take India to victory, on a pitch that was literally breaking apart, was the stuff of cricketing legend. If ever there was a moment when India needed its great idol to perform, it was there, when the whole country had been rocked by the events in Mumbai. As if answering their prayers, Sachin delivered.

  Sachin Tendulkar took part in the first Test match I ever went to as a schoolboy, with my dad in 1990 at Lord’s, watching Graham Gooch on the way to compiling 333. It is completely bewildering that Sachin is still playing today, after his fortieth birthday. He has performed all over the world, in all formats, with a consistency that has set him apart from all others that have played the game. His record is flabbergasting. Almost 16,000 Test runs have been scored in 198 Tests with 51 hundreds, alongside the not insignificant figures of over 18,000 ODI runs in an astonishing 463 games. We all know that he has now scored 100 international centuries. The figures are absolutely extraordinary. Having played international cricket for nearly ten years, I know something of the stresses and strains that go with playing the game at the highest level, but to do it for twenty-four years, in all the different forms of the game, is a feat just as impressive as his immense performances in those games.

  When I was playing, he was one of the very few opponents that I couldn’t help admiring on the cricket field. Of course I was desperate to get him out, but I always felt that I was in the presence of greatness. There was a nimbleness of footwork and a deftness of touch that separated him from mere mortals, but what impressed me most was his ability to get into a mental zone. Nothing flustered him. He never seemed to run out of patience. He just watched the ball and selected the requisite shot from his huge armoury. In that sense, bearing in mind the pressure and expectation heaped on his shoulders every time he went out to bat, he was unique.

  I remember going into the Indian dressing room after his monumental innings in Chennai, ostensibly to get a few bats signed by him for charity, and marvelling at his calm, unaffected state. Most players would have been bouncing around the room and swinging from the rafters after such an extraordinary performance. He was just sitting there surrounded by his kit as if nothing had happened.

  ‘Well played, Sachin, that was an unbelievable innings on a wicket that was turning so much,’ I said, trying not to sound too sycophantic.

  ‘Thanks. The wicket was very slow at the end,’ he countered, modest to the last.

  Perhaps it is the combination of his extraordinary consistency, meticulous preparation and calm, contained manner that means that some people preferred to watch the likes of Lara or Ponting or even Sehwag in their prime. Those batsmen were far less predictable, but were touched by a genius that most people couldn’t get close to. Tendulkar, though, is the only player I played against that has the full package. He has the genius, a technique that defines perfection and a mental fortitude that defies belief. What a player.

  If Tendulkar’s match-winning century knocked the wind out of our sails on our return to India, there were some far more menacing clouds on the horizon. It was quite a shock to me, having not been involved in the ODI series, to see just how far the relationship between Peter Moores and Kevin Pietersen had deteriorated. In team meetings they went through the motions, saying the right things, but the body language between them told a different story. There was no rapport, and away from the formal settings I didn’t see them speaking at all, which is an unusual situation in an international environment, with so many decisions to be made on a daily basis.

  By now, the issues between them had become an open topic of discussion amongst the team and support staff. In such circumstances, the players feel particularly exposed and vulnerable. It was clear that some manoeuvring was going on. Pietersen was talking to senior players about what he thought was wrong with the set-up, while Moores was also trying to seek advice about how to move forward. The players were caught in the middle, either feeling pressure to take sides in the underlying dispute or denying that anything was going on at all.

  From my perspective, it was one battle I really didn’t want anything to do with. I understood and agreed with some of Pietersen’s issues and concerns with Peter Moores’s methods, but my instinct was always to work with someone rather than against him. I couldn’t see how forcing the issue, which was apparently what Pietersen was trying to do, was going to help things. Driving wedges between players and support staff, who were fiercely loyal to Moores, was never going to have the desired effect. The only way out of the situation was for Moores and Pietersen to get in a room together and thrash out their differences, but the testy relationship they had shared prior to Kevin becoming captain did not allow them to do that. There was no way out.

  As we headed home for Christmas, after a tame, fog-affected draw in the second Test match in Mohali, we did so with an uneasy feeling about the future. It was quite clear that the ECB, and Hugh Morris in particular, were going to have to get involved to sort out the situation between Moores and Pietersen before we set off again for the West Indies, shortly after New Year. How he was going to do that was anyone’s guess, but it looked likely that one or the other would be losing their job in the near future.

  One of the more unfortunate elements of the whole saga was that word started leaking to the press that Kevin was trying to get rid of Peter Moores. If it had all been played out behind closed doors, then there might have been a chance to work things out amicably, but with the media speculating about divisions in the camp and Pietersen’s political manoeuvring, the ECB was effectively pushed into a corner. If they decided to support Pietersen, then Peter Moores and his support staff would have every reason to feel completely betrayed. In effect, the ECB would be yielding to the captain’s heavy-handed demands. If, however, they decided to keep the coach in place, then they faced the prospect of losing their newly appointed captain, and they would be ignoring some of the discontentment in the squad. Once the prospect of any sort of rapprochement had been ruled out, they effectively had only one course of action left, and that was essentially to get rid of both of them.

  I can only assume that Peter Moores felt pretty bitter about being dismissed in this fashion, but he has always kept a dignified silence on the subject, to his great credit.

  It is also fair to assume that Kevin Pietersen felt betrayed by the ECB, especially because of the leaks to the press that forced the issue into the open. It was a significant breakdown in the relationship between Pietersen and the ECB, from which neither side has ever fully recovered. I am sure that some of the later issues between him and the ECB over the IPL had their genesis during the first week of January 2009.

  Apart from the odd casual conversation with Hugh Morris about how everyone was feeling in the camp, I really didn’t have anything to do with the matter until a couple of days before Moores was dismissed and Pietersen announced his resignation. Over the New Year period, I was reading what was going on in the newspapers like everyone else, increasingly disturbed by the direction of events.

  I was not surprised, therefore, to receive a phone call from Hugh Morris on 6 January. I assumed that he would be ringing around the whole team to give us some sort of insight into what had been going on behind the scenes. The call started off pretty much as I had expected. He gave me a little of the background and told me where the ECB stood on the issue. He had that
cautious tone of voice, though, that you hear when people are trying to be careful with their words. He didn’t want to give too much away.

  Pretty soon the topic of conversation turned to potential candidates for the captaincy, if the ECB felt that it had to look elsewhere. My first instinct was to push the case for Alastair Cook taking over. I felt that perhaps there was too much baggage carried by the senior figures in the side, the likes of myself, Collingwood, Flintoff, Harmison and, of course, Pietersen. Maybe this was the time to pass the baton on to the younger generation in order to achieve a fresh start.

  ‘Straussy, I hear what you are saying,’ Hugh Morris said, ‘but would you consider doing the job yourself if it were offered to you?’

  In a way I was quite surprised and a little shocked that he asked me the question. The conversation had turned very quickly from one in which hypotheticals were being discussed into a far more direct line of enquiry. Given my level of surprise, and having not thought about it in any great length, I replied that I would have to get back to him.

  As soon as I put the phone down, I knew what my answer was likely to be. Of course I wanted to do the job. I felt that I had unfinished business in the role, and actually the more I thought about it, the more I believed that I might just be able to bring a team that was clearly in a state of chaos back together again. There was one issue, however, that needed to be addressed before I replied in the affirmative.

  I had to speak to my wife, Ruth, about it. On paper, it sounds like the best job in the world, but anyone who had witnessed what Pietersen had gone through could see that it was not a job for the faint-hearted. It would require complete commitment, long hours, many months away from home and far more scrutiny on me and us as a family. If I was going to take the job, then I wanted both of us to go into it with our eyes firmly open.

  ‘Andy, this is your dream job. Of course you should take it. We will be there to support you all the way,’ she said, as soon as I asked her about her thoughts.

  I spoke to Hugh an hour or so later. ‘Hugh, I have had a think about doing the job and I have decided that I would like to do it if offered.’

  That was the end of it. Earlier that day I had gone to my local café in Ealing for a coffee and a bit of breakfast, curious about how the situation between Moores and Pietersen was going to be resolved. Now, as I tucked into my dinner, with a glass of wine in my hand, it looked as if I was going to take over as England captain. What a difference a day makes.

  England in India 2008–09

  1st Test. MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai. 11–15 December 2008

  England 316 (A.J. Strauss 123, M.J. Prior 53*, A.N. Cook 52) and 311–9 dec (A.J. Strauss 108, P.D. Collingwood 108)

  India 241 (M.S. Dhoni 53) and 387–4 (S.R. Tendulkar 103*, Yuvraj Singh 85*, V. Sehwag 83, G. Gambhir 66)

  India won by 6 wickets.

  2nd Test. Punjab CA Stadium, Mohali. 19–23 December 2008

  India 453 (G. Gambhir 179, R. Dravid 136) and 251–7 dec (G. Gambhir 97, Yuvraj Singh 86)

  England 302 (K.P. Pietersen 144, A. Flintoff 62, A.N. Cook 50, A.J. Strauss 0; Harbhajan Singh 4–68) and 64–1 (A.J. Strauss 21*)

  Match drawn.

  India won the series 1–0.

  12

  CHANGING THE CULTURE

  As excited as I was to be given the opportunity, I was under no illusions about how difficult the task of captaining England was likely to be. On the surface, at least, everything was in chaos. I was inheriting a team with no coach, with a support staff appointed by the previous regime, with players who were divided and dispirited by what had been going on. Oh, and we had also lost our two previous series. The situation on the ground demanded action, fast.

  I was particularly pleased that Andy Flower had been given the role of acting coach for the West Indies tour that was due to start at the end of January 2009. I had always held him in very high esteem, both for his performances as a batsman and for the way he carried himself. I had enjoyed working with him as a batting coach, in which role he had avoided the obvious traps of telling everyone to do it the way he had once done it. I also felt that he would be able to gel the management and support staff together, which was not going to be easy, given their close relationships with the previous coach. He seemed to be the perfect man for the job, but the ECB, quite wisely after everything that had gone on, decided that they would wait until after the West Indies tour to appoint the position full-time.

  Before meeting with Flower to discuss plans for the future, I wanted to be clear in my mind exactly what grievances the players had, either with the coaching staff or with the way the operation was being run. It was important at this stage that I didn’t assume I knew what everyone else was thinking. It would be impossible for me to provide a way forward without first knowing exactly what was wrong.

  The message I got back from the players was remarkably consistent. While they generally felt that they had been bombarded with information, statistics and directions from the coaching staff, above all they just wanted the dressing room to be a harmonious place, without in-fighting, agendas and egos ruling the roost.

  Once I had finished my conversations with the players, I immediately felt far more reassured about the way ahead. The dressing room was not as divided as everyone said it was. All Andy Flower and I had to do was provide a direction and keep everyone together. It was obvious that we couldn’t forge a completely new direction forward for the England cricket team in the week or so that we had available to us before leaving for the West Indies. What we did, though, was concentrate on the areas that needed addressing most urgently.

  After everything that had happened, it was clear that the focus had to be on bringing the team back together. We both had ideas about how to do this, but we also understood that there might be better-qualified people to help us in this regard. Andy knew a guy called Alan Stevens, whose company specialised in healing conflicts in the corporate environment. We went to see him and listen to his advice.

  ‘What is your culture?’ he asked. ‘How do you operate as a team? Do you, for instance, have a “charter”, where the players buy into a way of operating?’

  He seemed more than a little surprised when I replied that we had never gone down that route. Cricketers tend to be a little sceptical, to say the least, of corporate speak, and the idea of everyone sitting in a room, talking about things like ‘values’ and ‘behaviours’ had been viewed as too much of a hard sell by previous regimes.

  As I sat there, it started to dawn on me that this element might be crucial to our development as a team. If we wanted players to genuinely commit to being a team, rather than just talking a good game about it, then they had to be involved in the process of deciding what our team was about. This was not something that could be dictated to them by management. They had to believe in it. They had to sign up to it. It had to be their team.

  Fortunately, all of this fitted quite easily with another area that I had strong views on: personal responsibility. In fact, I didn’t really like to call it that, as it sounded suspiciously close to the corporate speak that the players were so resistant to. I preferred to call it ‘allowing players to think for themselves’.

  When I looked back on it, the main issue with the regime of Peter Moores was that the management and support staff were just too hands-on. As I said earlier, I don’t blame them for it. They were trying their best to make a difference and were incredibly energetic in challenging players to get better. There was one crucial element missing, though, which was that the players did not have enough control in the process. Too often it felt like a teacher/pupil relationship between the support staff and the players. Coaches told the players what to do and they, in turn, either nodded their heads obediently or silently resented the fact that they were being told what to do when they were already world-class performers in their own right.

  It obviously caused more than a little friction, but it also didn’t make sense. When I considered the great Australians o
f the early 2000s, it was immediately clear that the team was made up of strong, self-reliant cricketers, who knew their own games well and were able to make good decisions in the cauldron of a pressurised match situation. If players were never allowed to make decisions off the pitch, why should anyone expect them to make good decisions on the pitch?

  To me, what was really needed was an adjustment of the relationship between the players and the support staff. I wanted the likes of Bell or Pietersen or Anderson to use the various experts that we had at our disposal as consultants, be they psychologists, fitness experts or coaches. In other words, the players had to be in control of the situation. If they were going to work on an aspect of their game, it had to be at their instigation.

  I know that some members of our coaching staff shuffled about very uncomfortably when I first proposed this. They were worried either that the players weren’t ready to be given that responsibility or that it would give them an excuse to be lazy or set in their ways. I saw it completely differently. To me, it took away excuses from the players. They would be unable to sit in a corner and moan about what the coach was telling them to do, or complain that they didn’t agree with the training methods. With more responsibility came accountability. In other words, they would be given enough leeway to prepare the way that they saw fit, but ultimately they would be accountable for their own performances. If they didn’t perform, then they could expect a knock on the door.

  In the long term, I imagined that the best type of environment was one in which the coaches and players operated on a similar level. That is to say that sometimes the coaches could push players and sometimes the players could be left alone to do their own thing. In order to get there, though, the teacher/pupil relationship had to go. For that reason, we decided that, for the West Indies tour at least, the training session on the day before a game would be completely optional. Players could chill out, relax and not train at all if they felt they were ready. Conversely, they could spend hours going through meticulous preparation if they thought they needed it. The crucial aspect, though, was that the players were in control of their own destinies, and this was an excellent way of demonstrating that they were to be trusted.